


The Road to Hell

by Qzil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Demon Meg, F/M, Hell, Human Castiel, Megstiel Week, Romance, Soul Selling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qzil/pseuds/Qzil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While exploring an abandoned insane asylum outside of town with his friends, Castiel discovers a young woman lurking in the basement who claims to be a demon and offers to buy his soul. When he rejects her offer, she visits him afterward, trying to convince him to sell, and he finds himself forming an unusual friendship with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road to Hell

Gripping his flashlight nervously, Castiel shifted from foot to foot and glanced over at his two companions. Dean Winchester kept his face schooled into a neutral expression, but Castiel could see the excitement hiding in his eyes. Dean’s little brother, Sam, was unable to hide his excitement as he stared up at the abandoned asylum with awe, a huge smile filling his face.

“Are you sure about this, Dean?” Castiel asked. “Sam is far too young to be here, and we could get caught. Maybe arrested.”

“Sam’s plenty old enough,” Dean told him. “I was fourteen when my older cousin brought me up here.”

“Yes. But we’re eighteen. We’d be tried as _adults,”_ Castiel pointed out. Sam rolled his eyes.

“Cas, no one gets a trial for trespassing,” he huffed. “They’d call our parents. That’s about it.”

“Then my mother would kill me and I wouldn’t go to college,” Castiel said.

“Look, man, if you’re too scared to go in, then don’t go in,” Dean told him. “You can stay out here and watch for cops.”

The wind blew, sending leaves rolling across their feet and opening the door of the asylum. It banged loudly against the old stone once before creaking ominously.

Castiel didn’t need to wait for a clearer invite.

“I’ll go,” he said. “But I’m not happy about it.”

Dean slapped him on the back. “Don’t be such a pansy. Sammy’s going in, and he’s a kid. Besides, nothing bad has never happened to anyone here.”

“Except all those murders!” Sam added.

“Yes, thank you, Sam. I’d forgotten,” Castiel said dryly.

“Okay, nothing bad has happened to anyone in here in the last twenty years,” Dean corrected. “Besides, the cops don’t care. Every kid does this. Hell, my parents _met_ on one of these little outings.”

With that, Dean strode forward and slipped into the asylum. Sam followed him eagerly, a bounce in his step, while Castiel walked slowly behind them.

“So, boiler room, maybe,” he said to himself. Moving the beam to the paper again, he squinted. “But it isn’t on the map. But who knows how accurate this thing really is?”

What Dean had said was true. Grand Oaks Asylum had once been the town’s largest employer until its closure in 1904. Over the years it had been left to return to nature, the town of Grand Oaks refusing to tear it down, calling it a historical landmark. Attempts had been made to fix it up over the years, but each time mysterious accidents had plagued the projects, and eventually the town had left it alone.

Over the years it had developed a reputation for being haunted, and turned into a popular spot for exploration by local teenagers looking to scare themselves or their dates. It had also been the site of several horrific murders, which only added to the asylum’s reputation for being haunted.

It was also true that many of the teenagers in Grand Oaks viewed exploring it as a rite of passage, and the police, having been teenagers themselves, usually turned a blind eye to people trespassing on the property, provided they were respectful and didn’t drink, do drugs, graffiti the walls, or litter. But there were people do did those things, and they were usually the people who were dragged away by the cops.

All of Castiel’s older siblings had explored the asylum when they were in high school, and even his younger sister, Hael, had taken a trip up there with her friends to celebrate the last day of their sophomore year of high school the year before.

And now it was his turn.

Stepping through the door, Castiel blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the dim light inside. The sun filtered through the broken windows and the few holes in the roof, illuminating the asylum’s large front room. Dean and Sam stood a few feet away from him, excitedly pouring over a paper detailing that asylum’s layout that Dean had found in the public library. Kicking empty beer cans and bottles of spray paint out of the way, he walked up to them, attempting to ignore some of the more colorful pieces of graffiti on the walls.

“Sam wants to go upstairs and see some of the rooms, and then I wanna see if I can find the rec room,” Dean told him without looking away from the paper. “You wanna come with us, or is there something you wanna see?”

Castiel glanced at the grand staircase in the middle of the room, swallowing when he noticed the holes in several of the stairs. “I think it’s best if I remain down here.”

“Well, take this, then.” Walking over, Dean handed Castiel a replica of his little map and slapped him on the shoulder again. “Don’t wander too far away and get lost, okay? We’ll meet back here in a little while. Keep your cell phone on.”

Nodding, Castiel drew away and studied his map, keeping his eyes locked on the paper until he heard his friend’s voices fade away. After a long moment he moved, following the map toward the opposite end of the building, to where the basement access was.

The basement, which held the morgue, and past that, the crematorium. When he reached the spot where the door was supposed to be, he frowned, seeing that there were two instead of one. The graffiti covering the walls was thinner here, compared to the rest of the place. The door farthest from him looked sturdy, but out of place, and was open invitingly. The door closest to him looked like it was made of old wood and remained firmly closed. Next to it on the wall was a single word, an arrow extending from it to point toward the door.

It said _Hell._

Figuring that a morgue and crematorium would be the closest thing to Hell there, he chose. Trying to keep his breathing even, Castiel opened the door and walked down the stairs.

When his youngest sister, Hannah, had heard that he was going up to the asylum, she’d begged and pleaded and finally dared him to bring her back a souvenir. At thirteen years old, she was too young to take the trip by herself, and too terrified of it to contemplate asking to come along. When Castiel had promised to snatch something, Hael had strolled into the room, held up a page of records she’d stolen as her own souvenir from her trip, and dared him to go down to the morgue and take something, too.

His sister had never made it to the crematorium. Hael had claimed to hear someone knocking on the closed door and had bolted, laughing, back to the main room. So he would venture deeper than she did and steal something from the crematorium.

If he could find it.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, bringing him deeper into the asylum. The only sound was the echoing of his footsteps. Strangely, the passage was clear of dust and spiderwebs, and the wood felt sturdy under his feet. Halfway down the stairs seemed to turn into stone instead of wood, but Castiel ignored it, convinced it was his mind playing tricks. At the bottom of the staircase was another door, and it opened after a few moments of jiggling the handle. When he stepped into the room and shined his flashlight around, Castiel groaned.

Cursing, Castiel aimed his flashlight down at his map and then shone it around the room. He’d taken the wrong door. Water dripped from somewhere down the hallway, and when Castiel aimed his flashlight at the ceiling he saw water pipes.

Turning, Castiel shone his flashlight back up the stairs. The door still hung open, allowing a weak beam of light to filter in. His heart pounded in his chest as suddenly the room became almost unbearably hot, and even the sound of the water dripping stopped, making the whole room silent. His flashlight flickered, plunging him into darkness for a moment before lighting up the small space again.

Castiel took a shaky breath and ordered himself to remain calm. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. There’s no such thing as ghosts. There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he mumbled under his breath, starting slowly for the stairs. _Screw Hannah’s request and screw Hael’s dare,_ he thought. _I’m leaving._

Both doors slammed shut, leaving Castiel alone in the dark room. Panicking, he leapt for the stairs, yelping and dropping his flashlight when he ran into the wood. Ignoring the loss of his tool, he clawed at the door, ignoring how it had seemingly turned from wood to stone, before jumping backward and slamming his shoulder into it, trying to get free.

It didn’t budge.

Panicking, Castiel scrambled for his flashlight, freezing when he heard footsteps. Scooting forward on his hands and knees, Castiel grabbed the flashlight and turned over, shining it toward the noise and grunting when his bottom painfully struck the floor.

Panting, he waved the flashlight around until the beam settled on a small woman standing in the corner of the room. The woman stared back at him, her dark eyes widening in surprise. In the faint light of the flashlight, they looked almost black to him. Still, he felt himself relaxing. She looked about his age, and easy to overpower. Her rounded face was framed by a curtain of dark brown hair that blended in with the shadows pressing in around her, making her look like a creature that had emerged from the darkness itself. Still, her pale face held a look of surprise, and instinctively he knew that he was safe for the moment.

She looked down at him for another moment before speaking. “Holy crap.”

“Are you lost?” he breathed. “Or are you exploring here, too?”

The woman ignored him. “You’re not scared of me?”

Confused, Castiel picked himself up off the floor, causing the flashlight to bob and give him a glimpse of the woman’s dark purple shirt and leather jacket. “Why would I be scared of you?”

She smiled at him, showing off teeth that looked slightly pointed. “Oh, I wonder. Strange girl in the basement of an abandoned mental hospital? Why would you be scared?”

Sighing, Castiel turned and shone his flashlight along the wall, relieved when he saw the door. “There must be somewhere that lets the wind in down here. Probably blew it shut and it got suck.”

The woman let out a clucking sound behind him. “Somewhere that lets in the wind, yeah. Sure.”

“What are you even doing down here?” he asked her. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you from Little Oak?”

“What’s your name?” she asked him. “Tell me that first.”

“Castiel. Your name is?”

“Castiel,” the woman said slowly, as if testing it out. “Cas-ti-el. What an odd name.” Smiling, she waved her hand and the room lit up. Castiel gaped at the walls that now held blazing torches and dropped his flashlight in surprise. The woman’s smile widened, and this time Castiel looked into her deep, black eyes and at her pointed teeth and knew they weren’t a trick of the light.

“What--who--“

The woman moved closer to him, forcing Castiel to back away until he hit the closed door. He fumbled with the handle, pulling on it desperately, causing her to laugh. “My name’s Meg, sunshine, and I live here. I’m a demon, and you’re standing at the mouth of Hell. Well, one of them.”

Castiel took a deep breath to calm himself. She had to be joking, had to be playing some sort of elaborate prank on him. “There’s more than one?”

Meg stood on her tiptoes and leaned into him, her whole body slightly swaying side-to-side in unnatural, snakelike motions. Leaning in close, she brushed her nose with his and bared her teeth.

“You’re not scared,” she whispered. “It’s…refreshing.”

Horrified, Castiel felt his eyes widen as Meg opened her mouth and her tongue slithered forward. Longer and thinner than a human tongue, it was forked at the end. Meg moved it up and down his cheek, lightly stroking over his stubble and leaving a slimy trail behind. After a moment it snapped back into her mouth as quickly as it had emerged and Meg stepped back, her face suddenly settling into a businesslike expression. She sat down in the air and crossed her legs as if sitting on an invisible stool and tilted her head at him.

“I like you,” she said. “Would you like to sell me your soul?”

Surprised, Castiel blinked rapidly. “What?”

“Your soul,” she repeated. “Would you like to sell it to me? I can give you anything. Money or power or women or goats.”

“Goats?”

Meg let out a small chuckle. “I’m dating myself. But think about it. There’s no hidden clauses or anything. You sell me your soul, you get what you want, and when you die, I take you down to Hell with me and you’re mine forever.”

Castiel swallowed hard. “Ah, no. No, thank you.”

She frowned and then shook her head. “Oh, alright. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Exploring. I was looking for the crematorium,” he told her. “May I go now, or are you going to kill me and drag my soul to Hell?”

Meg blinked at him. When she opened her eyes again, they were dark brown, and looked like any other human’s. “No. I’m not going to do that. You’re just a kid, probably exploring this place on a dare.” Sighing, she stood and stretched. “I’ll take you to the crematorium, though. It’s just this way.” Jerking her finger in the opposite direction, Meg raised her eyebrow at him. “Unless you’re too scared to walk down a hallway with a demon?”

“I’m not afraid of you,” he told her. Meg smiled and waved her hand again. The stone on the wall shifted, the stone parting to reveal a tunnel. She walked toward it without waiting for him. Castiel tried the door one more time, jumping backward when it slowly morphed into stone.

“You coming?” Meg called.

Sighing, Castiel followed her.

.

Groaning, Castiel fell face-first onto his bed and moved his arms under his pillow to bring it closer to his face. Meg had disappeared halfway down the tunnel, leaving him alone until he reached the crematorium, making him unsure if he had hallucinated the whole thing from fear or if he had actually seen a demon. Still, he’d gotten a lose brick from the crematorium to bring back to his sisters, so he’d completed the mission. Hannah had been delighted with it.

He hadn’t told Sam and Dean anything about his trip, just that he’d seen a few interesting sights. The brothers never would have believed him, and would have made fun of him for letting the darkness and the spooky stories about the place get to him.

Not for the first time, he was grateful to finally have his own room. His family’s brood of twelve had finally lessened to six for the time being, meaning that he and his siblings remaining at home finally had their own spaces, at least until the summer when his brothers and sisters returned from college. Most of his siblings that were living on their own still spent most of their time at the family house, however, making peace and quiet a valued commodity.

But now he had his own space, where he could fret in private.

Groaning again, Castiel pushed his face deeper into his pillow and told himself that he would never let Dean talk him into any adventures again. Ever. He ignored it when his room grew warmer, preparing to sink into sleep.

“Well, don’t you look good enough to eat like that.”

Jumping, Castiel rolled off his bed and landed in an undignified heap on the floor. Feminine laughter filled the room, and he could feel his face burning for a moment before terror shot through his body at the sound.

Peeking over his bed, Castiel wished that he could find a way to sink right through the floor.

The demon hadn’t been a hallucination. She was real.

And she was sitting on his dresser.

“Don’t scream,” she warned, shooting him a beaming smile. “No one can see me but you.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked her. Slowly getting to his feet, he glanced over at the door, wondering if he should make a run for it.

“I was curious,” she answered casually. “I haven’t been out of that literal Hellhole in a while. Besides, you’re cute, for a human.”

“Uh-huh,” he muttered, beginning to inch toward the door. Meg watched him for a moment, tilted her head to the side, and then held her hand out toward him. Castiel yelped when, with a casual wave of her hand, she sent him flying backward. He landed more gently on the bed than he expected to.

“I just want to talk.”

“Sure. A demon just wants to _talk,”_ he drawled, trying to adopt Dean’s self-assured tone. From the way Meg raised her eyebrow at him, it clearly didn’t work.

“It’s curious. Most humans start running and screaming when they see me, or assume I’m a hallucination. You didn’t. Even when I did that tongue trick.” She pouted at him. “The tongue thing _always_ works.”

“So, your tongue really isn’t three feet long and forked?”

“Not in this body, no,” she answered. “Simple manipulation. Let the demon bleed through a bit. As much as it can here, anyway.”

“You don’t look like a demon,” he told her. Meg frowned at him and looked down at herself, as if noticing her clothing and skin for the first time.

“This is just a vessel. A pretty vessel, but a vessel,” she explained. “You need a meatsuit, if you’re topside. Bits can slide through, but just bits. Not all of you. I slipped into this pretty thing right before they slid her body in the oven. You can bet they were surprised. For a minute, anyway. After that they were too dead to be anything.”

He stiffened at her casual mention of murder, but made no move to get up off the bed. “This has to be a nightmare from visiting that place.”

“Nope, this is one hundred percent real,” Meg said cheerfully. “Do you want me to pinch you to prove it?”

“No, thank you.”

“So polite,” she purred. “Another thing that makes you interesting. I’ve been topside for a long time, Clarence, and you know how many humans have told me ‘no, thank you’ when I asked for their soul? Just you. Usually they scream, or curse, or call me a bitch. Or they sell.”

“Castiel,” he corrected automatically. Meg frowned, and he saw her eyebrows draw together in confusion.

“Well, that’s rude of me. Not remembering your name.”

“It is.”

She smiled again. “Funny, too.”

She didn’t talk again, and Castiel didn’t try to jump start the conversation. It was sort of nice, actually, sitting with someone without talking. Even if the someone wasn’t really a person.

But after a few minutes, the silence got to him. He sat up and looked at Meg, intending to talk. Before he could, she gave him a little wave. When he blinked, she was gone.

.

He spent the rest of the week convincing himself it had been a dream. He went to school, did his homework, hung out with Dean, listened to his siblings fight, and in general went on with his life.

Until, finally, Sunday rolled around.

Castiel loved Sundays. His siblings usually ran off to their friend’s houses after church, and his parents, without fail, always went out for lunch together, giving themselves a little date night. Now that he and his siblings were all old enough to be left home alone, he supposed that they didn’t need to take those few hours after church to be alone while their kids were off gallivanting with friends, but he thought they simply valued the tradition. It was romantic of them, in his opinion.

But it also meant that he got a blessed few hours home alone.

It was impossible to get time alone in his house. There was always someone, a brother or sister or cousin, running through the house, creating havoc or shouting. Even at night, most of them had to share rooms with one another, so even in sleep there were other people around, snoring or talking or generally keeping him awake. But then Gabriel had moved out to go to college the year before, and Balthazar had departed for London two months later, freeing up a room in the household that Castiel’s younger brother and Hannah’s twin, Samandriel, had promptly claimed for his own.

Which was just as well. Castiel’s room held the best access to the roof for sneaking out, or so Gabriel had told him multiple times when Castiel had caught him tip toeing in and out of it late at night. But it meant that he no longer had to share with a younger brother and Castiel’s parents, clearly anticipating that Gabriel would not be moving back home after college, had dismantled Samandriel’s bed and finally allowed him to have his own desk for homework to put in its place.

Still, Sundays were a good day for him. Sundays meant a few hours of peace and quiet, settling down in front of the television in the living room and being able to watch a program he actually wanted to see without siblings squabbling over the remote or complaining that his Natural Geographic documentaries were lame. Not having to share the only television in the house was worth giving up hanging out with Dean for a few hours, in his opinion.

Walking into the house after church, Castiel loosened his tie and headed for the kitchen, intent on heating up some of the leftover Chinese food from the night before for lunch and settling down to watch a documentary on lions. He was opening the cabinet and reaching for a bowl when, out of nowhere, the temperature in the kitchen skyrocketed and he knew he was not alone.

“I see you weren’t a dream,” he said, stiffening. Turning around with the bowl in his hand, Castiel’s mouth opened in shock when he saw Meg rummaging through his refrigerator. She eventually emerged with a can of Coke in one hand and his leftover pork fried rice in the other, smiling.

“Sweet, a bowl. Thanks.”

Still in shock, he stood still as the demon took the bowl from his hands and dumped the rice in it before striding across his kitchen to pop it in the microwave like it was something she did every day. Her movements around his kitchen were casual as she rummaged through his drawers for a spoon, the microwave humming merrily in the background.

“Close your mouth, Clarence. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you’ll catch flies that way?” she said once she found a spoon. The microwaved pinged in the background.

“You eat human food?” he asked. Meg nodded without looking at him, reaching for the bowl, moaning around her spoon when shoveled some into her mouth. After a second bite she hopped up onto the kitchen counter.

“Sometimes. When I can,” she answered. “You don’t get this, where I’m from.”

“Which is?”

“Hell. I told you that. I’m a demon, remember?”

“I’m still not convinced that I’m not hallucinating or dreaming. I could have fallen asleep watching a documentary.”

“You didn’t,” she assured him. “It’s me, in the flesh.” She frowned down at her food. “Well, someone’s flesh, anyway. But I didn’t come here just to talk this time.”

“No?”

Meg shook her head and set aside her bowl before schooling her face into a businesslike expression. “No. What do you want, Castiel?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that question. You’re the one who keeps popping up in my house.”

She shook her head again. “You know what I want. But what do _you_ want?”

“To live a long, happy life, with a good job and a good wife and have many fat grandchildren,” he answered. “I most certainly _don’t_ want to go to Hell.”

“Most humans don’t,” she said dryly. “But they wind up there all the same. I meant what I said, you know. I could give you _anything._ Money. Power. You could still have your good job and wife and a lot of fat grandchildren with those things. Stepping stones, you see.”

“I don’t think so.”

Meg shrugged and returned to her food. “Well, can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“That is my food, you know.”

“Demon, honey. All-powerful force of evil. We steal,” she told him. But she smiled at him playfully and held the bowl in his direction. “Grab a spoon, then.”

After hesitating for a moment, Castiel did.

If someone had told him that one day he’d be standing in his kitchen on a Sunday afternoon with an honest-to-God demon straight from Hell, eating reheated pork fried rice with her, he’d have suggested that they get themselves to a real asylum. Or that they had simply taken too many trips to the run down one outside of town. But it was real. He really had this ancient, powerful, terrifying creature with him in his kitchen.

When they were nearly finished, Castiel felt courage bubble in his chest. Now that he’d refused her a third time, she would probably leave him alone. In every book he’d read, three and seven were magical numbers, and now that they were at the third visit, his time with her was up.

She’d said that she was curious about him, but he was also curious about her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” she mumbled, not bothering to swallow her food.

“You said that there was an entrance to Hell there.”

“Yeah.”

“Then how come we’ve never seen any other demons?” he asked.

“You probably have. We don’t announce ourselves to just anyone, you know. But as far as I do know, I’m the only one around these parts, because that’s my Hellmouth.”

“Your Hellmouth?”

Meg nodded. “Yeah. Mine. It isn’t the only one in the world, or even in this state.”

“How…how many are there?”

“I’m not actually sure,” Meg told him. “They aren’t permanent. New ones open and old ones close every day. Last time I got a chance to count, there were around seven hundred and forty eight just in your country, give or take a few.” He whistled, and Meg nodded. “Yeah. Sixty seven of them were in New Jersey.”

“Not surprising.”

“Well, there’s bound to be more of them in more densely populated areas. They don’t just spring up randomly, you know. The openings are created on sites of great despair, or fear, or bloodshed. Battlefields. Hospitals. Schools.”

“Schools?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, schools. All those adolescent hormones flying about, stress from classes and college applications, bullying and everything else. Teenage emotions are powerful things. Super-charged souls.”

“So, you steal the souls of children?”

“I _buy_ the souls of whoever wants to sell them to me,” she corrected. “But, no, I don’t buy the souls of the very young. I don’t like kids.”

“Oh.”

“They’re sticky.”

“You’re a _demon.”_

_“I’m_ not sticky. Well, not all the time. Not on this plane.” Meg frowned again and looked around his kitchen. “You got any cookies?”

Castiel blinked at her, confused. “Cookies?”

“Yeah, cookies. You know, snacks?”

He stared at her for another moment before going to rummage through the cabinet, returning with a box of Oreos. Meg seemed delighted with the treat and popped one in her mouth, eyes closed in bliss.

“I love chocolate. Best thing you guys ever invented,” she told him when she’d finished. “I love Earth. Food and movies and cars. And stars. We don’t have those down in Hell, you know.”

“I don’t imagine you do. It being underground and all.”

Meg laughed. The sound filled the large kitchen, high and feminine and sounding entirely wrong coming from the mouth of an evil creature. But Castiel found himself smiling along with her, anyway. It was nice, to talk to someone who was so frank about what they’d done in their life, instead of sliding around their deeds or talking of begging for forgiveness for them.

It was nice to talk to someone who was honest.

“You said that Hellmouths close every day. The asylum hasn’t been active for a long time, so shouldn’t yours be closed?” he asked. Meg laughed again and bit another Oreo in half.

“Well, the worse the place is, the bigger the opening, and that place was _bad._ It takes a long time for a large portal to close, and even then, it can be recharged. If somewhere sees more fear or bloodshed while the portal is open, it’ll grow, or at least stay the same size. Mine’s tiny now, but all you kids going up there, scaring your dates and yourselves, helps keep it open. That and souls. When you buy a soul and bring it down through a portal, that portal recharges. Souls equal energy. Like electricity, only mystical” she explained.

“So, that’s why you wanted to buy my soul? So your portal could stay open?”

She nodded. “The more pure a soul is, the more energy it has. But like I said, I don’t deal in children, so goody two shoes young adults are my best bet. Or people just coming out of confession. But they’re usually unwilling to sell.”

“All those murders through the years, were they you? To keep the portal open?”

Meg shook her head. “No. I didn’t do that. It did help keep the portal open, though. Fresh blood always does. But those were normal, human acts. Why are you asking so many questions, anyway?”

“It’s not every day you meet a demon.”

“True. But you did just get back from church. Shouldn’t you be chanting at me in Latin or flinging crosses at me, or something?” She smiled again and looked at the cross hanging on the wall. “You can, you know. It’ll be funny. It always is.”

“You don’t seem to want to hurt me. The only thing you seem to want to do is eat my food.”

“And buy your soul,” she added cheerfully.

“And that. But I’ve declined, and you don’t seem interested in trying to persuade me further. Besides, all of this is very interesting.”

“That it is,” she agreed. “You know, I don’t only want your soul to recharge my portal.”

“You don’t?”

Meg popped another Oreo into her mouth. “Nah. Like I said, you’re cute. You’d look good chained up on my wall, screaming and bleeding. Maybe I’d put a collar on you.”

Castiel felt the blood drain out of his face as he suddenly remembered just _what_ he was sitting with. She looked so normal in her stolen body that it was easy to forget that she was a creature from Hell, even as she talked about it.

She frowned at him. “Oh, did I say something scary?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m a demon. We do that. The torturing and killing and the eating babies,” she pointed out. “Well, I don’t eat babies. My mother does, though.”

“You have a mother?”

Her frown deepened. “And a father, and a brother. Don’t look so surprised, Castiel. Humans aren’t the only ones who get to have a family.”

“So demons have children?” he asked. His curiosity got the better of him again and he sat at the table, gesturing for her to join him. She did, bringing the package of Oreos with her.

“Not in the traditional way you’re thinking, no,” she started. “See, we’re demons, but we’re not _demon_ demons, you know?”

“I don’t.”

Meg nodded and waved her hand, a piece of paper and a pencil appearing in front of her. Gripping it, she drew three lines on the paper. “There’s Earth, here,” she said, scribbling EARTH above the first line. “Below it is Hell.” She labeled that, too, in her large handwriting. “But below that…below that there’s, well, more of Hell. But it’s different from my Hell. Older. Worse. Deeper than you can imagine. That’s where the Old Ones are.”

Flipping the paper over, she wrote OLD ONES and drew an arrow pointing downward, scrawling the word HUMANS under it. Under that she drew another arrow, and scrawled the word DEMONS.

“First came the Old Ones. They were the real demons, pure demons, and they walked the Earth with man, killing when they liked and doing what they liked. They laid waste to the humans, drove them into caves and across great stretches of water as they tried to flee. But everywhere they went, the Old Ones found them.

“Until the angels came from the sky. To save the humans they drove the Old Ones underground, deep into the soil that they had once clawed their way out of. On their way down, one of the Old Ones grabbed a simple human girl and took her with him. She stayed in the realm with them, the Old Ones punishing her for what had happened. Eventually, she became like them. She became the first of our kind, the first demon to be turned.”

Castiel leaned in to hear the rest of her story. Her voice was low and even, as if reading from an old, boring book, but it entranced him all the same. He knew that he should ask her to stop, that he should ignore her words. He knew logically that God couldn’t have made the Earth in seven days, and he believed in evolution, but the words coming from her mouth still contradicted everything he’d learned at church or in his textbooks.

But he was fascinated. Her people had their own origin myth, and obviously their own way of handing it down.

“The girl’s family was so distraught by her absence that they wept every day at the site where she had disappeared. It became her grave to them, and as she was being tortured below the Earth, she could feel their pain and suffering above her. All the time she was with the Old Ones, she tried to break free, tried to claw her way back to the surface like they had done. Eventually, she succeeded. But she was no longer human, and no longer felt emotions as one. She clawed her way out of the Earth where it had swallowed her and stood on the ground for the first time in hundreds of years and saw it changed. A tree grew over her resting place, pulsing with despair, and from that spot the first Hellmouth grew.

“She was no longer at home above the Earth, as she was no longer human. But she was not like the Old Ones, either, who were pure, untainted by human desires and wants and needs. She was alone, and lonely. So she found a human man and took him beneath the Earth with her, and made him like her, and together they returned to the surface again and again and again until there were many more like them.

“The Old Ones, barred from the Earth by the angels, descended deeper underground and went to sleep, waiting for the day when they could wake and claim the Earth for their own once again. The new demons, with their taint of humanity, could leave their prison, and did often, returning to the world above to make more of themselves, to corrupt other souls as they had been corrupted, and to escape the place of their corruption. This is what we will do, until the Old Ones awaken once again and cleanse the Earth.”

Meg waved her hand again, and the paper vanished. “Or so my father tells me, anyway.”

Castiel let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s amazing.”

“It’s probably mostly bullshit, like your Bible. I’m not saying that there’s not sprinklings of truth in it, of course,” she added when she saw his expression change from fascination to anger. “I’m just saying that your Bible was written by men. Ours was written by a bunch of old demons who’ve gone to dust by now. No difference. There must be some truths hidden in it somewhere. But most of it is probably bullshit. Give people hope. An explanation for what we are and why we do the things we do.”

“So, demons die?” he asked.

Meg nodded. “Sometimes. Not often. It’s hard, to kill a demon. But the right spells, the right place and time, and poof. You die. Or go down deeper, into the realm of the Old Ones. No one really knows. But dying’s like that.”

“But if there’s a Hell, there must be a Heaven,” he said. “Right?”

Meg tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes. “I suppose. I haven’t seen it, of course.”

“Of course,” he echoed. The two fell silent again. Castiel sat and watched as Meg continued to devour her way through the package of Oreos, her stomach seemingly endless. Oh, well. At least none of his siblings would get to them now.

“I should be going,” she said when she was finished. “If you’re not interested in selling, I need to find someone who is.”

“I understand.” Pushing his chair back, Castiel stood. “Can I walk you out?”

Meg smiled. “No need, Clarence. See ya.”

With that, she simply vanished, leaving Castiel alone in his kitchen.

.

She showed up again a week later while he was doing homework.

He knew it was her by the way his room suddenly grew very hot. Without bothering to look up from his History textbook, Castiel took his pen from his mouth and grumbled that he would just be a minute. When he turned around in his chair, he saw her floating cross-legged above his bed.

“I take it you were successful, then,” he said evenly when he saw her expression. There was a triumphant light in her eyes, and her smile seemed to fill her whole face.

“I was,” she told him. “Nice man, too. His wife’s cancer went bye-bye, and my portal got a little bigger. Selfless sellings are always good for the job.”

Strangely, Castiel didn’t feel revulsion at her words, like he thought he would. She was so happy about what she had done that it was almost contagious.

“Why are you back?”

“Wanted to see if you were ready to sell yet,” she teased. “It would only take a little while, you know, to make you like me. I’d do it, too. Not every soul gets to be made into one of us, you know.”

“No, thank you. Would you like to sit? The hovering is unnerving.”

She raised an eyebrow at him but complied, landing on his dark blue bedspread with a soft thump. “Screw that history homework. I’ll give you ten million dollars for your soul. Never have to worry about school again.”

“Except for when my mother kills me for failing.” Sighing, Castiel rubbed his eyes. “I do need a break, though.”

Meg bounced off the bed. “Good. Let’s go get some more food.”

Without really knowing why, he followed her down into the kitchen.

.

She visited him at least once a week, sometimes twice, and on one memorable occasion, she visited a third time. She always teleported in without a sound, and never in front of his face, the temperature in his room or kitchen the only indicator that she had arrived.

Each time, she playfully asked if he would like to sell his soul, and each time he politely declined.

It was nice, in a way, to have a sort-of friend that was all his own, a secret. He couldn’t tell anyone about her visits, obviously. Even Dean would think that he was crazy. His siblings and parents would no doubt force him into counseling, but not before they hauled him off to church for a good talking-to from the priest.

He knew that he should be repulsed by her, since she was a demon who was only looking to take his soul and corrupt it, but he wasn’t. Every time she appeared she told him stories of her time walking the Earth, hopping from one century to the next without pause. She was full of interesting facts and trivia that he never would have guessed a demon would know, and from time to time slipped into different languages without realizing it. She still accidentally called movies ‘talkies’ on occasion, or would talk about how far cars and planes had come along since they’d first been invented.

She was a well of information, and Castiel drank all of it in.

Beyond that, he found a certain kind of peace with her. She expected nothing from him, except maybe his soul one day, but she had even seemed to accept that he wasn’t selling. Unlike his parents or siblings, who always had something for him to do, or Dean, who was always insisting he get out more, Meg seemed content to sit in his small room and talk. She liked to hear about school, having never gone to it herself, and liked to listen to him talk about his many siblings, having only one of her own.

He lost sleep over it, their conversations sometimes lasting until the early hours of the morning, or else he would research something Meg had told him about in passing. He watched movies more at her recommendation, or picked up books he never would have touched if not for her. Her taste varied wildly, from what his teachers considered to be classics to silly romance novels that he found discounted at the supermarket, and he tried not to question it.

When he did, she simply smiled at him and said that she’d been around a long time, and needed something to fill the endless hours.

He figured that was why she continued to visit him, but he didn’t mind.

Until she stopped showing up. A week went by, and then another, and then another, and still Meg was absent.

After a month of going without talking to the demon, Castiel finally put his brother’s theory about his room to the test. Gathering up his coat, a flashlight, and a few Oreos that he stuffed into a ziplock bag, he opened his window and stepped into the night air.

His heart pounded in his chest the entire time. He’d never snuck out of his house before, had never even thought about it. He was the good son, the one who kept his grades up and never got into trouble. It was one of the reasons his parents had given him the room with easy access to the roof.

Trying to keep his footing on the shingles, Castiel stumbled across the main part of the house before stepping down to the section of the roof that jutted over the garage before carefully lowering himself onto the trellis that crept up from the backyard. From there, it was a simple climb to the ground and a quick sprint to the woods behind his house.

He cursed himself for not thinking ahead when he realized how long the walk was going to take. But, he reasoned, he couldn’t take anyone else with him. Not when he was looking for a demon. For the first time, he regretted not having a car.

He moved through the path in the woods, jumping at every sound and shadow and then relaxing when he realized how foolish he was being. He’d spent the last few weeks having regular chats with a creature straight out of Hell, after all, and was seeking her out. There was nothing in the woods that could be more terrifying than her.

Except maybe a murderer.

Trying to push that thought from his mind, Castiel let out a relieved sigh when he emerged from the woods to find the path to the asylum. The old stones were cracked with age, weeds poking up through them and grass growing between them as nature struggled to reclaim the road.

Hurrying up the path, he didn’t hesitate when he reached the old gate, simply glancing around for any sign of police before he slipped through. There were no other signs of life, no telltale flashlight beams or giggles that signaled other teenagers were prowling around, looking for some fun, so he was safe.

The front door of the asylum was open, as it had been for decades, so Castiel simply walked in. He could hear rats and other small animals moving in the darkness, and thought he heard the rustling of wings as birds or bats swooped among the rafters. But it was cold there, too cold for Meg to be hanging around in the main room.

Trying to remember where he’d first found her, Castiel ventured deeper into the building, fear worming its way into his belly. It was far too quiet without Sam and Dean there, chattering in the background, and too dark.

Just when he was about to admit that venturing out had been a mistake and that he should turn back, he found the door with the graffiti next to it. It was hot to the touch, and he could feel the warmth from it soaking into the hallway.

He hesitated for a moment with his hand on the doorknob. He should go back home, sneak back into his bed, and forget about his hours spent with the demon and focus on his goal of fat grandchildren.

Without his prompting, the door swung open. The beam of his flashlight illuminated a rickety stairway, clean of dust and cobwebs. Heat flowed from the passage invitingly.

Choice made, Castiel began his second walk into the mouth of Hell.

.

It was shorter than he remembered. In what seemed like no time at all the stairs under him changed into stone. Unlike his first trip, the passage grew lighter the longer he followed it, and by the time he was almost at the bottom, he no longer needed his flashlight. Torches blazed on either side of him, the heat of them making him sweat under his heavy coat. Tucking his flashlight in his pocked next to his Oreos, he opened the second door that he now knew led to the large stone room that contained Meg’s portal home.

Except she wasn’t there.

Standing in the middle of the room was a tall man with short, dark hair and demon black eyes. A smirk decorated his face, and his square jaw was covered in stubble. His clothing was similar to Meg’s, he noticed, dark pants and a darker leather jacket, and he found himself wondering if all demons favored leather.

“Hello there,” the demon said. “What a curious little human, stumbling down here all on his own.”

Mouth suddenly dry, Castiel tried to swallow. All his instincts screamed at him to run, to turn around and flee from this new demon, but he stood his ground.

“I was looking for Meg.”

The demon cocked an eyebrow in the same way that Castiel had seen Meg do many times when she was teasing him, or when he’d done something to amuse her. “Are you now? What do you want with my sister? I can give you anything she can, you know.”

Castiel opened his mouth to reply when suddenly the wall behind the other demon seemed to waver. Meg stepped through it, looking slightly worse for the wear. Her shirt was torn to ribbons, exposing angry red stripes on her pale stomach, her hair was in disarray, and there were large, dark circles under her eyes.

So, that was where the portal was.

The other demon turned toward Meg. “Sister. How nice to see you. You have a gentleman caller.”

Meg rolled her eyes, but when she spoke, Castiel noticed that she sounded tired. “Fuck off, Tom.”

The other demon actually pouted at her. “What, you don’t want to share?”

“No, I don’t. Scat,” Meg ordered. “Go home. Dad wants to talk to you.”

Tom turned toward Castiel, rolling his eyes. “She gets jealous. It’s just because I’m prettier than her.”

Meg swatted her brother’s shoulder playfully. “He’s my gentleman caller, Tom. Not yours. And no way you’re prettier than me.”

Castiel watched the exchange silently, amazed that they teased each other in a way that seemed so normal, so human. Meg had told him little about her family in Hell, and he always assumed that, being demons, they would naturally be rougher with each other.

A second later, their teasing escalated, and he found out he was right. Screeching, Meg threw herself at her brother, sending the two of them rolling across the floor as they punched and scratched and bit each other. But it only lasted a few minutes before they were laughing and Tom picked himself up, helped Meg off the floor as well, and brushed the dirt from his jeans.

“I’ll leave you kids alone, then,” he said. Winking, he strolled backward, the wall wavering behind him, and vanished into the stone. Meg rolled her eyes at the empty air.

“I hate him sometimes. What’s up, Clarence? What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

“Looking for you,” he told her. “I haven’t seen you in a month. I suppose I was worried.”

“What, did you think some other beastie got to me?” she teased, trying to take a step toward him and faltering. “Damn. My meatsuit got all banged up.”

“Apparently I was right to be worried,” he said dryly, moving forward to catch her. To his surprise, Meg let him. She must have been surprised, too, because she immediately tried to jump out of his arms, only to fall right back into them.

“Shit. It’s not just my meatsuit that has healing to do, I guess.”

“What happened?” he asked. “I didn’t know--I mean, how do demons get like this?”

“Other demons,” Meg grunted. “Hell isn’t exactly a nice place, Clarence. Why do you think I spend so much time topside?”

“The food and the talkies.”

Meg wrinkled her nose at him. “Oh, go to Hell.”

“No, thank you.”

She laughed and tried to stand again, letting him help her. “So, you came all this way to see me? I didn’t think I was gone that long.”

“Does time move differently in Hell?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s always different. It can be a hundred years down there and two minutes up here, or a week here and a week there. Always shifting. Hell usually moves faster, though. I only spent six months down there this time.”

“And it translated to one up here?”

“Seems so.”

He nodded and stood there, his arm around her waist, feeling the heat pour off of her. She smelled like woodsmoke and blood.

“Maybe you should come home with me and rest there,” he suggested. “Instead of staying down here. You could sleep in my bed. It would be more comfortable.”

“A gentlemen buys his lady dinner first,” she teased, laughing when he blushed. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

“I’ll carry you,” he offered. Meg shook her head.

“No need. Take my hand and close your eyes. Try to brace yourself.”

He tried to ask her exactly _why_ he needed to brace himself when the ground shifted under him. The stone melted away, replaced by a blur of color, but his body itself did not seem to move. His organs did, though. He felt his brain slosh around in his skull and it felt like some force was trying to suck his eyeballs out of his head. Even his teeth seemed to vibrate.

In an instant it was over and the walls of his bedroom slammed down around them. Head swimming, Castiel let go of Meg’s hand and stumbled. The room spun around him as he tried to get his footing, holding his hand out to grip his desk and breathing hard to try to steady the world.

Feeling bile rise in his stomach, he just managed to make it across the hallway to the bathroom before he puked.

“That’s it, let it out. Shh, it’s okay,” Meg soothed, crouching next to him and rubbing his back. “Sorry, Clarence. I forgot how hard that can be when you’re not used to it.”

“Is it like that every time?” he asked her. Meg nodded.

“Yeah, but like I said, you get used to it. You did better than I did, though. The first time my father teleported me somewhere, I couldn’t even stand up for a while afterward. I threw up, too. But c’mon. It is pretty cool.”

“I think that I will think its cooler once the bathroom stops spinning.”

“Give it a minute.”

He did, and then he gave it another, resting his cheek on the cold seat of the toilet, too sick to care exactly where his head landed. After about five minutes the room stopped spinning, and his body felt like it belonged to him again. Standing on shaking legs, Castiel flushed away the mess and moved for the sink to brush his teeth, grateful that his family hadn’t heard him.

After that, he and Meg stumbled back into his room. Still a bit disoriented he sat down on his bed and simply watched her as she casually moved around, opening his drawers until she pulled out one of his old t-shirts. A gag gift from his older brother Gabriel, it was a soft pink with a kitten on the front, the words _I eat_ scrawled above the cat in pretty, flowing cursive.

“My brother thought it was funny,” he mumbled when Meg raised an eyebrow at him.

She shrugged. “It is.”

Without pausing Meg shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it over his computer chair before shedding her torn shirt and moving for her bra.

“What are you doing?” Castiel squeaked, slamming his eyes shut.

“I’m not sleeping in that thing. It’s all torn up,” Meg told him. “I’m gonna borrow your shirt. You should probably change, too. Oh, you can look now.”

He opened his eyes in time to see Meg toss her jeans in the general direction of his chair. His shirt came down to almost her knees and the large neck of it fell to the side, exposing one of her pale shoulders. Her hair was still a mess, and she still had dark circles under her eyes, but the sight of her standing in his bedroom, wearing his clothing, made him forget for a minute that she was a demon. She looked so young, so much like just another human girl sneaking over to spend the night at her boyfriend’s house.

He got up to change, too, asking her not to look as she did. Meg smiled but obeyed, anyway, going so far as to put her hands over her closed eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was teasing him or not, but he found himself smiling all the same. Changing into a pair of sweatpants and a clean, gray t-shirt, he grabbed his pillow off the bed and went to get his spare blanket from the foot of it, intending to sleep on the floor.

“You can crawl in with me,” Meg said. “I promise to behave myself, and it is your bed, after all.”

He was too tired to argue or protest, so he crawled in with her. Meg snuggled in after him, hogging more than her share of the covers and kicking him in the process. After that, she barely managed to remember the lights, waving her hand in the general direction of his lightswitch to turn them off. He was surprised that she didn’t just make the bulbs explode.

She fell into a dead sleep immediately afterward, breathing heavily against her pillow. Back turned to her, Castiel stayed as far away from her as he could, nearly falling off the edge of his mattress. Meg, however, sprawled out in her sleep, tossing and turning and stealing more and more of the blankets until he was shivering.

Until she turned a final time, flung her arm around him, and snuggled up against his back. She let out a content, sleepy sigh and stilled, her nose pressed between his shoulder blades, and began snoring. But she was so warm that Castiel found he didn’t even need the blankets.

Ignoring the slight awkwardness he felt at cuddling with a demon, Castiel settled down to sleep.

.

He woke up slowly; Meg still snuggled against him while his mother hovered over him, a concerned look on her face. Castiel froze in fear for a moment and waited for Naomi to begin screaming at him.

But it didn’t come. Relaxing, he remembered that Meg had told him that the only people who could see her were people that she wanted to see her.

“I heard you throwing up last night. Are you alright?” Naomi asked, placing a cool hand on his forehead. She flinched backward before returning her hand and frowning. “You’re burning up. No school today. Do you want to go to the doctor?”

Castiel shook his head. “I think it’s one of those twenty four hour bugs. I must’ve picked it up from Dean’s house. Sam was sick with it a couple of days ago.” He wasn’t lying, really. Half the school had been out sick the last few weeks with some bug or another.

“Well, if you need anything, call your father or me at work. Just stay in bed today and try to sleep. You look exhausted. I left some Dayquil and water on your desk.”

He nodded, and Naomi slipped out of the room. In a few more minutes the front door closed, signaling that she had left for work and that he was alone in the house. Then Meg woke up.

Growling, she stiffened against his side and then relaxed. She looked better today, he saw, the dark circles under her eyes nearly gone and her face more relaxed. She blinked up at him, eyes full demon black, and smiled, showing off thin, pointed teeth. He felt something long and thin twitch and wrap around his leg under the blanket.

“Morning,” she mumbled.

“Um, Meg, what’s in the bed with us?” he asked when whatever it was tightened around his thigh. Meg looked at him with her eyebrows drawn together in confusion for a moment before the thing withdrew.

“My tail. It’s harder to keep the human form presentable when I’m sleepy. Bits bleed through,” she explained. Castiel sat up, alarmed, and scooted away from her.

“You have a tail?”

She blinked at him again. “Uh, yeah. Demon. I’ve got horns, too. And claws. And the pointy teeth. And my tongue really is long and forked and slimy.” She opened her mouth to demonstrate and her tongue slithered out, the tip flicking playfully at his nose. “I told you, this is just a vessel.”

“What do you really look like, then?” he asked. “Do you still walk around on two legs?”

“Sometimes,” she answered, evasive. “You wouldn’t think it’s so pretty.”

Sensing that she wanted to change the subject, Castiel gave up on pestering her about her true form. As he watched her, she seemed to become more aware, and her demon self melted away behind her mask of humanity. Her teeth became shorter and blunter, her eyes returned to a soft brown, and he felt her tail withdraw. When she was finished she blinked up at him again and smiled.

“So, that was my brother. He’s a little shit, huh?”

“He seems to care for you.”

Meg snorted. “Yeah, he does. But he can be an asshole sometimes. But I guess all older brothers are. Just because he’s a couple of centuries older than me he acts like he knows everything.” She flopped onto her back and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “He needs to find something to do with his time other than pestering me.”

“He doesn’t attempt to buy souls?”

“Nah. He doesn’t care if a Hellmouth closes or not. There are always other ones, he says. He doesn’t spend a lot of time up here, anyway. He likes sticking close to mom and dad.” She sat up and stretched, raising her arms high above her head until Castiel heard her back pop. “Mm. That was the best sleep I’ve had in ages. You’re so _warm.”_

It was his turn to laugh. “That would be you. My mother thought I had a fever, I was so hot.”

“Are you saying I’m pretty?” she teased. When he didn’t answer, she punched his shoulder lightly, almost affectionately, like his sisters always did when he annoyed them. “It’s because of Hell, you know. Hot as Hell isn’t just an expression. It really is hot down there.”

“I imagine. All fire and brimstone.”

She sat up and turned to look at him, hands folded in her lap and face serious. “Why did you try to come and find me, really? It was dangerous for you to go there.”

“You didn’t come in a month. I thought…I thought you weren’t coming back at all,” he told her quietly. “That you’d got bored of me and gave up on buying my soul and I missed talking with you.”

“I gave up on buying your soul the second time I talked to you,” she said. “Honestly, Cas, I knew you weren’t selling.”

“Then why come back?”

She shrugged. “It’s nice to talk to someone who isn’t a demon.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh,” she snorted. “You’re my friend, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then stop worrying. Until that portal closes and I have to find a new spot to crawl out of, I’ll be around. Now, looks like we have the house all to ourselves. I’m thinking breakfast.”

He smiled. “Sounds good.”

.

She kept visiting, popping into his room with no explanation whenever she liked to tease him away from homework to do something more interesting. They began leaving his house more, strolling in the woods or even sitting on the asylum’s grounds. He grew used to teleportation until it no longer made him sick and he could handle it almost as well as Meg could, the feeling of his feet leaving the ground and being slammed into a different place growing familiar.

Spring turned into summer, and school let out, and he began to prepare for community college in the fall. Dean wasn’t going, continuing other courses at the vocational school for welding and his other interests. His siblings who had managed to get scholarships to go away to school flocked back to the house, creating more noise and filling up every room. Since Samandriel had taken his room, Gabriel bunked with Castiel, using an air mattress on the floor, forcing his and Meg’s nighttime visits to cease.

He still met her in the yard most nights, taking the route from his window to the ground. Gabriel, no longer needing to sneak out, teased him often about leaving in the middle of the night. He guessed that Castiel was meeting a girl, and he had reluctantly told his brother that he was, just to shut him up.

“A girl that our darling mother wouldn’t approve of?” Gabriel asked him one night as he helped him back through the window.

Castiel thought about Meg’s tail and pointed teeth. No, his mother certainly wouldn’t approve of her.

He had his first beer with her that summer, sitting in the asylum’s back garden while the full moon shone down on them. There was a fountain back there that had long been turned off, with stagnant rainwater in the bottom of it, but it was one of Meg’s favorite places to sit when they were there. They’d been out there one night, looking up at the stars, when she’d reached into the fountain and pulled a six pack of Miller Lite from it. He’d gagged at the taste while Meg laughed and thumped him on the back, telling him that it was more acquired than anything, and then pulled a soda out of nowhere for him.

As the summer went on more and more teenagers arrived to explore the place, and Meg found herself busy with work, trading souls for whatever her victim’s desired.

He saw evidence of her work everywhere he went, now that he looked for it. He saw classmates who were desperate to get approved for full scholarships celebrating as they came through as if by magic, saw adults walking around with more money than they should’ve had from their jobs or with new cars that they never would’ve been able to afford. His mother’s friend, who had been sure she was infertile, suddenly became pregnant with triplets, much to her joy. One former classmate of his won the lottery.

He could tell who was simply lucky from those who had been visited by his demon from the look in their eyes. The lucky ones beamed with happiness, while the ones who had sold their souls had a small, haunted look in their eyes, knowing what was coming after their deaths.

Castiel tried not to let her profession bother him. He reminded himself that she was a demon, and at her core was evil, even if she had once been human. It was too easy to forget what she was when she joked with him and walked around in human skin, or crawled into his bed, looking like any other teenager.

.

“You said that you were human once, right?” he asked her, lounging back against the asylum’s fountain. Meg shrugged and sipped her beer.

“A long time ago.”

“How long? How old are you?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember my human family at all, or what I did to land me in Hell. I don’t remember if I sold my soul, or if I did something else to get sent there, or whatever else. I don’t even remember becoming a demon. All I remember is waking up one day and seeing my father looking down at me, a smile on his face. His eyes…they were so beautiful. They’re yellow, you know. He’s the only demon with eyes that color, because he’s so old. I’ve heard of white-eyed demons, like Lilith and Alistair, but they’re so old that they’re with the Old Ones now, sleeping. Waiting.

“I woke up and I saw him, and I saw my mother, and I saw Tom. Azazel smiled and called me his daughter, and Abaddon…she took my hand and welcomed me to the family, and I felt safe. For the first time I can remember, I felt safe, and warm. So incredibly warm. Of course, later I found out that it was all the fire making me feel that part.”

“Well, from everything you’ve told me, I can assume you’ve been around a long time.”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Long before your country was even a country, really. Whenever I was topside, I spent a lot of time in what became Russia. I liked all the snow. It used to be a lot easier, when I was young. There weren’t as many openings in your country, of course, or as many people to use to walk around, but it was easier to hide. Forests were everywhere, villages were scarce, and snow piled over your head. Then humans went and invented photography and video cameras appeared on every corner, and you had to document your birth, and now it’s harder to hide. Forget taking a living person for a vessel, because their family will report them missing and there’s fingerprints and shit now if you do something. You need a license or passport for everything. Hell, I can’t even _buy_ a damn beer if I want to.”

She finished her beer and threw the can behind her into the fountain, uncaring. The clouds covered the moon, plunging them into total darkness, and he felt her fingers nudge against his. He took her hand and squeezed it, preparing to be teleported somewhere else, raising his eyebrows at her when they didn’t move.

“I’ve been around a long, long time,” Meg continued softly. “You’re still a baby, compared to me.”

“I suppose,” he said. The clouds moved and the moon came out again, and he saw that Meg’s eyes had gone black, the demon in her pushing against its human bindings. She moved closer to him and turned to sit on her knees, keeping their hands together, her eyes hooded.

“I like blue eyes,” she said, and kissed him.

He froze for a moment before kissing her back, ignoring that he was, essentially, kissing a corpse. Her lips were warm as they moved against his, and a few moments later he found out that her tongue was, too. He kissed her clumsily, having only been kissed a few times before by girls at one of Dean’s parties, while she moved expertly, thousands of years of experience backing her.

Meg had no need to come up for air, and soon he found his head swimming with the need for it and pulled away, gasping. She moved for him again when he was done, swinging herself into his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck to pull him closer, encouraging him to touch her as well. He did, putting his hands on her hips and cautiously stroking her back before moving a hand up to tangle it in her dark hair.

She was warm, and soft, and felt so human sitting in his lap. Her mouth tasted bitter from the beer, and there was something else under it that he couldn’t identify. But the more they kissed the more he could feel her changing. He ran his tongue over her teeth and found that they were thinner and sharper, felt his hand bump against something hard just above her ear, and heard her tail thump softly against the dirt. Her tongue grew longer and became thinner in his mouth.

When he pulled away, the demon inside of her stared at him. Long, dark horns grew from her head, curling like a ram’s. Her nose seemed longer and broader, while her face itself had elongated, resembling a cat’s. Her eyes were wider and seemed far too large for her face, but were still as black as the night sky. Her tail twitched on the ground, long and thin as a whip with a large, lethal-looking barb on the end.

He moved his hands around her waist to keep her in his lap and kissed her again. She was terrifying and otherworldly, and she was kissing _him_. He felt her claws dig into his shoulders, shredding his shirt, and wondered if she was even aware that her true self was pushing through her human vessel.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed. She laughed, her head tilting back and sending her hair parting around her horns.

“I’m glad you like the meatsuit.”

“Not the meatsuit,” he told her. She looked down at herself, her eyes widening in surprise, and smiled. Her needlelike teeth glinted in the moonlight.

“There’s a bit of an age gap going on here,” she joked.

“Just a small one.”

She kissed him again.

.

It was easy, being with Meg. She let her true face out more often around him instead of hiding behind the face of a dead girl. She let him touch her horns and the small, dark spines that grew out of her back under her shirt, laughed and swatted him with her tail whenever he gave it a playful tug. They kissed often.

Summer slipped into fall, and she stayed with him more often, lounging in his bed reading gossip magazines he fished from the garbage for her while he did his homework or talked about class. She slept at his house more often, too, always slipping into the kitten shirt and cuddling up against him when she did.

There were a few times where she indicated that she would like more than just the kisses they shared, and, if he was being honest, he wanted to move beyond them, too. But he couldn’t forget that she was technically riding a corpse, that her earthly body didn’t belong to her. She seemed to understand, on some level. She told him time and time again that she didn’t understand human morality, but she respected his choices.

Mostly. She frequently scoffed at his collection of Christian rock.

Whenever they got together, Dean would tease him about the dopey look on his face, or the way his eyes frequently became clouded and dreamy, and would sometimes ask when he was going to meet the mysterious girl that had a hold over his friend. Castiel had never told him about Meg, but somehow the older boy had known. Perhaps because he so frequently had the dreamy look on his face himself while he chased after other girls.

He still kept Meg a secret though, and denied that anything was happening. He liked their bubble, liked those few nights a week where it was just the two of them in his room or the asylum, and he could forget about school or his sibling’s shouting or trying to plan his life. Things were simple with Meg. She had no expectations aside from food and his company, and he expected nothing else from her.

.

“Get dressed,” she said one Saturday. She arrived as she usually did, popping onto his bed without warning. “We’re going out.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You want to go out? Where?”

“You’ll see. It’s a surprise,” she told him. “You have to dress nice. It’s a suit and tie place.”

He grumbled but obeyed her, slipping into the suit his parents had bought him when he turned eighteen. All the men in his family got one. Why, he didn’t know. His father simply said it was tradition.

When he was finished, Meg began brushing his hair with a comb that he was sure she hadn’t had before. One it was suitably arranged, she ran her fingers over the stubble coating his cheeks and chin before shrugging, and told him that it added to the look.

“Turn around while I change,” she ordered. Confused, Castiel obeyed. Meg was never shy about her stolen body, and he had gotten used to seeing her in different states of undress.

He studied himself in the mirror while he did so. Meg had combed his dark hair flat and parted it to the side, using some sort of demon magic to make it stay in place and look shinier. She’d done something to the suit, too, making it look like it belonged in a different decade, although he couldn’t quite place it. The suit, combined with the stubble coating his square jaw, made him look older than he was, though not by much.

He heard a small noise behind him as smoke filled the room, followed by a giggle from Meg. “You can look now.”

Castiel turned around and felt his mouth drop open.

Meg turned around so he could see her outfit. Instead of her usual leather jacket, low-cut top, and high heeled boots, she was wearing a short-sleeved, fuzzy sweater, white as newly fallen snow. A pleated, dark blue skirt fell to her knees, flaring out when she twirled. A polka dot kerchief the same color as her skirt decorated her neck while a belt cinched itself tight around her waist. Her hair, usually in disarray or hanging pin-straight down her back, was now lightly curled and brushed away from her face, held back on the right side by a large bow.

“What do you think? Not my usual style, but I tried to follow the invitation.”

“Invitation?” he repeated. Meg nodded and walked for his mirror, a tube of lipstick appearing in front of her face when she waved her hand. It hovered in the hair for a moment before moving over her lips and vanishing again. She smacked her lips together and smiled at him.

“Some of my friends are having a party tonight. A throwback thing. The invitation just said to ‘come dressed from whatever era you remember’ so I picked the fifties.”

“I thought you were older than the nineteen fifties?”

“Yeah, but I _remember_ them.” Face turning serious, Meg grabbed his hands and sat him down on his bed. “You need to know some things, though. Don’t eat or drink anything they give you. I mean it. There might be stuff you don’t wanna see there. Tell me if you don’t wanna go.”

“Like what?”

“Remember how I told you that my mother liked baby blood? Well, so do a lot of other demons. A lot of other demons also like normal human blood. Or flesh. So just don’t eat anything. I wouldn’t drink anything, either, if I don’t give it to you. Stick close to me. Don’t let anyone else touch you. We’ll leave before the human sacrifice starts.” She ducked her head, and for the first time since they’d met, Castiel thought that she almost looked embarrassed. “Also, my mother is going to be there.”

“I just can’t believe demons have parties. Up here,” he said, ignoring everything else.

Meg raised her head and smiled again. “What, you think humans are the only ones who get to have any fun?”

He tightened his grip on her hand, and she moved them. When he regained his footing, they were in a cornfield.

“Huh.”

“It’s in a barn this way,” she told him, jerking her finger behind her. Standing on his toes, Castiel could see lights in the distance, and began walking toward them, keeping his hand in Meg’s. Large, round lights lit the path, and the closer they got to the barn, the more people Castiel saw. All of them were dressed in clothing out of different eras, from formal suits to furs, and he had to force himself not to stare at the odd ensembles. Laugher and music drifted out from the open barn doors, and occasionally a human sounding scream.

“No matter what you see, don’t say anything,” Meg warned him. He nodded and watched her eyes go black as she stepped through the door.

He swallowed hard when he looked at the wall and saw three men hanging from hooks, gags in their mouths and their wrists bound in front of them. Meg grabbed his arm and steered him away from the sight and into the throng of demons milling around, talking to each other. There were glasses in almost every hand, some filled with liquor and some filled with a darker, thicker liquid that he knew was blood.

“This doesn’t seem like something you’d enjoy,” Castiel muttered when they reached the opposite wall. In all their time together, Meg had never mentioned casually associating with other demons, as she was doing now. Without looking at him she grabbed a glass of dark liquid off the table and drank from it. When she pulled it away, blood stained her mouth.

“It isn’t,” she told him. “I didn’t want to come. Mother made me. We’ll stay for an hour, maybe two. Then we’ll go.”

“Why did you bring me, then?” he asked. Meg frowned.

“I guess I didn’t wanna come to an unpleasant party alone.”

Before he could answer, a tall woman with fire red hair glided up to them. She was dressed in a black, high collared gown with a bustle, and had eyes as black as Meg’s. When she saw them, a sweet smile broke out on her face. Her teeth were needle thin and pointed, as Meg’s were, and there was a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth.

Meg stood up a little taller next to him.

“Meg, sweetheart, how good to see you back among your people,” the woman purred. Castiel found himself shrinking away from her voice, but Meg gripped his hand with bruising force, making him stay in place. “You even brought your little pet. How nice. Have you eaten yet, dear? There’s some delicious infant.”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said quickly. Meg’s mother laughed.

“He’s a polite one, isn’t he? No wonder you’re slumming it with the humans.”

Meg ignored her mother. “Is father here?”

Abaddon waved her hand, dismissive. “Somewhere.”

“Tom?”

“With his own little pet. Enjoy the party, dear.”

With that, Abaddon departed, leaving them alone near the wall. Meg gulped her drink again, sending blood running from the corner of her mouth. Without thinking, Castiel reached up and wiped it away with his sleeve.

“We should be able to go soon,” she promised. “She’s not like me and father. She _likes_ Hell. She rarely even comes up here anymore, and she _wants_ to find a way to go beneath with the Old Ones.” Meg paused. “Well, dad likes Hell, too. But he understands why so many of us _slum_ it up here, as she put it.”

“I wonder what she meant when she said that Tom had a pet?”

Meg shrugged. “He’s probably picked up a human, too. I can smell a few of them in the crowd. We just have to--shit.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Meg pointed across the barn. Castiel followed her finger and swallowed hard.

He saw Meg’s brother, dressed in a white shirt and a kilt, spinning _his_ little sister under his arm.

Hael looked beautiful, rosy-cheeked and starry eyed, and completely unafraid. She was wearing a red, sleeveless dress with white polka dots on it, and it flared out with her dark hair as she spun. Her blue eyes glowed as she looked up at her demon, smiling, and happily accepted a glass when he handed one to her, giggling when he reached to hold a piece of food at her lips.

He really hoped that whatever she was eating and drinking, it wasn’t human.

“She’s…she’s a child.”

“She’s sixteen, Clarence. When Tom walked the Earth she would’ve had her own passel of kids at her age,” Meg argued. “Don’t make a scene. Not here. We don’t have to go over.”

Anger flared in his chest, and he opened his mouth to argue when Meg made him turn and stare again at the humans on the wall. He swallowed his anger at her unspoken warning and turned away, unable to watch as his sister took her demon’s hand and followed him out into the night.

“She must’ve been to one of these before,” Meg said, watching them go. “She didn’t seem phased.”

“Demons have a lot of these?”

Meg nodded. “Yeah. We’re responsible for a lot of mass murders, the ‘Satanic’ stuff that the cops are always blabbering on about, and pretty much all of the cannibalism. Sorry to taint our good name for you.”

They stood in silence for a while, leaning against the wall of the barn and watching demons decked out in finery dance along to whatever music was coming out of the large speakers set up in the corner. Castiel couldn’t identify it. To him, it sounded like a multitude of guitars and drums being played together at once, and all of the lyrics were in a language he didn’t know.

Finally, when the crowd had grown larger, Meg moved away from the wall. “Let’s dance.”

“I’m not very good at it.”

“That’s okay. No one here is.”

So he followed her out into the middle of the barn, his back turned against the men slowly dying on the wall, and tried to imitate her movements. She danced wildly, hips moving and arms raised, looking more like she belonged in some teen adventure movie than in a barn in the middle of nowhere. Turning around, she pressed herself against him as she moved, one of her arms snaking behind his head. He automatically grabbed her waist and tried to follow her movements.

She twirled away from him, took his hands, and danced them in a circle, raising his arm up to spin herself underneath it, sending her skirt flying around her.

For a moment, Castiel forgot his awkwardness, forgot the dying men hanging on the wall, forgot his sister dancing with a demon and the human flesh and blood being served around him, and gave himself over to Meg’s movements. They both danced together clumsily, bumping into the demons around them and stepping on each other’s feet and laughing when they did. Despite their surroundings, it felt so normal, to be out with his sort-of girlfriend, doing something that normal couples did.

Until a hand tapped his shoulder and Meg’s face fell. She stopped dancing, but didn’t drop his hand. Turning around, Castiel found himself looking at a man with striking, yellow eyes. He was frowning, deepening the lines on his face.

Meg’s father.

“Hi, daddy,” Meg said behind him.

“Hello, child,” Azazel rumbled. Castiel automatically took a step backward, his heart hammering in his chest. Azazel continued to stare at him, not even bothering to look at Meg. But Castiel could feel the demon in her coming out when her fingers elongated around his and her claws dug into his palm. Azazel must have seen it, too, because he finally looked at her. “Put those away.”

Her claws retracted.

“Hello, sir,” Castiel said. To his own surprise, his voice was calm and firm. Meg’s father actually smiled at him.

“Enjoying the party, son?”

“We were just leaving, actually,” Meg informed her father. Castiel didn’t dare glance back at her, although he wanted to. He felt comfortable with Meg, despite knowing what she was, and even felt a little comfortable around the other demons, since none of them seemed to notice him. Even her mother hadn’t terrified him as much as her father did. The older demon’s eyes seemed to go right through his body, down to his soul itself, and he could tell that they didn’t like what they saw. Azazel stared at them for a long moment, and then blinked.

“Don’t make a habit of it,” he said, then left.

They stood still for another minute before Meg led him out of the barn, walking at a casual, unhurried pace until they reached the open air and broke into a run. She didn’t stop until they reached the spot where they teleported in, finally letting go of his hand and doubling over.

Panting, Castiel reached out cautiously when he saw her trembling. But then she raised her head and let out a loud, happy laugh. Howling, she fell backward into the dirt, clutching her middle, laughing so hard that tears actually began to form in her eyes.

Confused, Castiel crouched in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“His _face,”_ she gasped. “Don’t you realize what happened, Clarence?”

“You brought me to a demon party, and it went about as well as expected?”

She howled again. “My father doesn’t _like_ you. Oh, how stupid and messed up and _human_ can this get? My father _disapproves_ of you!”

He froze for a moment, and then began laughing, too. They laughed together until he was out of breath and Meg was lying on her back, no doubt staining her pretty outfit, and not caring if she did.

“Oh, man. We fucked up,” she said.

Before he could answer, she sat up and pulled him into a rough kiss. Heart pumping with adrenaline from leaving the barn alive, he kissed her back, not stopping even when she teleported them back into his room. He let Meg nip roughly at his lower lip and pull his suit jacket off before she shoved him back onto his bed and climbed on top of him. He let her move her hands over his body and kiss her way down his neck, let her bury her needle sharp teeth into his soft flesh until he felt it break.

Her thin tongue slithered from her mouth to lap at the shallow wounds, and he felt himself shivering at the sensation.

His own hands roamed freely over her flesh, untucking her shirt to pet the spines starting to grow from her back and reaching down to grip her thighs. He pulled at her hair, doing it again when she growled playfully against his mouth and arched her back into his touch.

Meg rolled them over so he was on top of her, her legs spread so he was slotted between her thighs, and pulled him down for another kiss. He could feel heat pouring off of her small body, warm enough to almost burn his skin, and shed his shirt before her claws could rip through the material. Her claws sunk into his skin as soon as the material left his shoulders, and he knew he’d made the right choice.

Until her fingers danced downward and she was tugging at his belt.

He stopped her, grabbing her hands and forcing them away. “We can’t.”

Slowly, her claws retracted and her horns vanished. Even her eyes returned to normal, leaving him looking at a completely human looking girl. A walking corpse. Her makeup was smudged and her hair was in disarray, the careful curls pulled out by his fingers, and her bow was missing.

She sighed. “It’s just me in here, you know. The girl’s long gone. She was barely dead when I got her. No rotting or anything.”

“I know,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be right.”

She nodded slowly and sat up, lightly pushing him off of her so she could root through his dresser for a shirt to wear to bed. He rose silently and undressed with her, slipping into a pair of sweatpants. The weather might’ve been turning colder, but in bed with Meg, he was always hot.

She slipped into his bed silently, throwing the covers over both of them when he crawled in next to her. He threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side, needing her warmth.

“You want to know something crazy, Clarence?” she asked.

“What?”

“For a minute there, I felt almost human.”

.

In the following weeks, Castiel thought about their night out together a lot. She’d invited him into her world for a brief moment, showing him what she was really like, what really went on outside of the confines of their bubble, and he hadn’t hated it. There were parts of it that made him feel sick, but as time passed, he barely thought about them. The men hanging on hooks for food shouldn’t have been normal, or anywhere within the realm of acceptable, but around her, they were. She’d drunk blood in front of him without thinking about it, and he’d kissed her afterward, not caring about what she had done.

Then she had admitted that, for a moment, she’d walked in his world, too.

He tried to gather the courage to talk to Hael about what he’d seen that night. But every time he looked at her, his courage wilted. She looked so happy as she walked around the house, humming to herself or staring out into space, that he couldn’t bring himself to confront her. She was in love, and blooming from the feeling, practically humming with life. Tom was her secret to keep or to share, like Meg was his, and as long as she didn’t sell her soul, he had no right to interfere.

He just hoped they weren’t having sex.

He and Meg went back to their usual routine, sleeping together in his bed and talking into the night and rambling in the woods. But their casual kisses and light touches stopped, and Castiel found that he missed them.

He wanted her, more than he’d ever wanted any of the girls he’d crushed on back in school, but he couldn’t bring himself to take the final step. The skin she wore around him was still the corpse of some other girl, no matter how often she allowed pieces of her true self to leak through it. It was still someone else. It wasn’t really _her._

Her human vessel was beautiful, but so were the glimpses of the demon that he’d gotten, and every time she allowed those parts of herself to appear, he found himself wishing that he could see the whole thing.

And, remembering her room in the asylum, realized that he could.

.

He walked to the asylum alone, flashlight bobbing in the darkness and a six pack of beer dangling from his hand. Stealing it was the first criminal thing he’d done in his life, and his hands were still shaking from the theft, but Meg had taught him well. She was waiting for him at the ancient gate, wearing a decoratively patched sweater against the cold.

“Out back?” she asked, falling into step beside him. He shook his head.

“It’s too cold. Let’s go inside.”

“Teenagers lurking around.”

“I bet we could make it to your room before they noticed us,” he argued. Meg gave him a curious look, but nodded, leading him through the abandoned building and down the long staircase that opened up into the mouth of Hell. Heat blasted out of it, but Castiel noticed that the room was smaller this time, and looked more run down, decaying like the asylum above it.

“It’s starting to close,” Meg told him, taking one of the beers. “I’ll have to buy another soul, soon. Or do something else to keep it open. How opposed are you to human sacrifice?”

“Very.”

“I thought so.”

Meg finished her beer and started on another while Castiel walked around the smaller room. Tom had vanished through the farthest wall, walked right through it as though it wasn’t there, and Meg had appeared from it as well. He squinted at it, trying to find whatever door or portal they had taken, but all that he saw was solid stone.

“You have to be a demon,” Meg said from behind him. “Or have a demon open it for you. Otherwise it doesn’t work.”

“Oh.”

Meg came up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder. Her arms wrapped around his waist. They stood like that for a long moment, staring at the wall, before she nudged his head with hers.

“Do you wanna see it?” she whispered, so quiet that he had to strain to hear her. “Do you really wanna know what it’s like?”

“Yes,” he breathed. His heart hammered in his chest and echoed in his ears, and fear ran through him, flowing outward from his belly. But excitement began to sing in his blood, too.

Meg let him go and took a step back. “Okay. But we need to be careful. No one’s ever brought a human into Hell before intending to let them back out.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a long, red ribbon that was slightly frayed at the edges. She yanked on it a few times, testing it, before she reached to tie one end around his right wrist. “Now, tie the other side around mine.”

He did, noticing that there was about a foot of slack between their hands. Meg nodded and tugged at the ribbon again.

“What is this for?” he asked her.

“So we don’t get separated. It’s enchanted, so it shouldn’t break. If you got loose, you might wander off, or take a wrong turn, or get caught by something else, and then I’d never get you back out. Listen to me, Castiel. This is very important. Don’t let anyone take this off of you. Hold my hand for as long as you can. Don’t eat or drink anything. Anything at all.”

“What happens if I do?”

“Remember Persephone?”

Swallowing hard, he nodded. “I’ll be stuck down there.”

She nodded back. “One month for each seed. One human month. And time moves differently in Hell. If there’s one thing we have down there, it’s a lot of pomegranates. But I’d try not to touch any of the other plants, either.”

“Alright. I won’t eat anything,” he promised. “Should I know anything else?”

“I won’t have my human skin down there.”

“Good.”

She looked at him for a long moment before waving her hand at the wall. It shimmered, the stone becoming hazy, before it began to part. There was no sound to it, no coating of dust or small rocks tumbling down to land at his feet. The ancient stone parted like a curtain, revealing an opening just wide enough for two people to walk through it shoulder to shoulder. Peering down, he saw a long, stone staircase that disappeared into darkness, with no way to tell how far down it went.

Without hesitating, he stepped onto the stairs. Meg followed.

.

The stairs seemed to go on forever under his feet, but Castiel got the strangest sense of time slowing as he walked. There was always another step in front of him in the darkness, but it didn’t seem like he was walking long. Meg kept a hard grip on his hand, walking with him step for step. He could not see her in the darkness, but he could feel her changing next to him. The longer they walked, the more her human shell seemed to melt away. She grew taller than him, her legs a little longer, and her claws came out, resting lightly on the back of his hand. He could feel her tail, longer than it ever was when she allowed it to show on Earth, brush against the back of his legs. When he almost tripped, her other arm reached out to steady him, and he thought he felt a brush of thin, oily fur.

Then there was a soft light in front of them and smooth ground at their feet, and Castiel gasped.

Hell looked nothing like he imagined, and nothing like he’d read.

They appeared to have walked into a low valley, bordered on all sides by high, barren mountains with jagged peaks. The ground under him was made of hard-packed dirt, so dry that it looked as though it had never seen rain. Dust covered his boots when he took another step and rose up around him. The land seemed frozen in twilight, not quite light enough for sun but not dark enough for stars. It burned all around him, the hot air making sweat bead on his brow. Scrubby bushes dotted the landscape, filled with thorns and dark, black flowers that had a reddish hue at the tips of their petals.

The only thing that grew in plenty was the trees.

There were trees everywhere, their branches hanging low and heavy with their bounty, and he instinctively reached out to touch one before remembering Meg’s warning. He inhaled deeply, smelling smoke and sulfur, before he turned to look at his demon.

She was magnificent.

She was taller than him, though not by much, and she was skinnier in her true form. Her flesh, covered in what looked like thin, oily fur, clung to her bones, exposing every rib and sharp, jutting angle. The fur that covered her was black as pitch, and so thin that when he ran his thumb over her hand he could see bright pink skin under it. Her eyes were larger, rounder, and her nose was wide and flat, stretching over her face like a feline’s. Her face, too, had changed shape, resembling a cat’s, and her teeth were longer and thinner than he’d ever seen them. There were more of them, too, layers and layers of needles in her mouth. Her lips were mostly gone as well, simply two thin, pink lines peeking from her fur.

Her legs changed halfway down, calves morphing into an animal that he could not identify, ending with broad feet that seemed all toes and claws. Her breasts had flatted and were no longer visible under her pelt. Her hair flowed down her back around her curved horns, blending in with her fur until he could barely tell it was there.

But her hands were the same as they had always been when she’d let her true form out around him. Her curved, sharp claws moved smoothly over his flesh, and he could feel the strength in her long, thin fingers.

“Wow,” he breathed, at a loss for words. Meg laughed. Her laugh was the same, too.

“We can’t stay long,” she warned him. “Time moves faster here, but you never know when you’re going to be, when you go back. Did you want to see something else, or is this enough?”

Looking around, he hesitated. To turn back now would be safer, and the wisest course of action. But as far as he knew, he was the only human who had ever seen Hell and would walk out of it as alive and human as he entered it, and it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.

And he could be with her real self here. He could see her as she really was, hold her real hand, kiss her real lips.

He did, standing up on his toes to reach her. His arm that was bound to hers wrapped around her small waist, so tiny it seemed to hold no organs and he thought that he could easily touch the fingers of both hands around it. His other hand tangled in her hair, holding her to him. Her mouth was mostly fur, and damp when he pressed his lips against it, but the strange sensation only made him kiss her harder.

“I want to see something special. Somewhere you like down here,” he told her when he pulled away. Meg stared at him, surprised, and then shrugged, turning to lead him under the trees. They squeezed through a small path carved between the mountains, walking with Meg in the front, the ribbon tied around his wrist the only thing keeping them connected.

She turned sharply to the right without warning, making Castiel nearly lose his footing, leading him through a short, narrow passage that he had not seen before. It emptied into a large room, so tall that the high ceiling was lost in darkness. There were torches burning on the walls, with humans hung between them, dangling from chains or hooks or collars around their necks. He tried not to look, but found himself staring, fascinated.

Each human was in a different stage of transformation. Some of them had tails, or horns spouting from their heads, or the beginnings of claws sprouting from their hands. Others had patches of fur sprouting on their bodies, or stubby wings. They were covered in blood and filth and looked half-dead, but many of them still stirred when they saw Meg, attempting to turn away from her or flatten themselves against the wall.

Meg paid them no attention and led Castiel deeper into the mountain, turning through twisted passageways and pulling him up hidden sets of stairs. He went with her, regretting his warm winter clothing the deeper into the mountain they went. They moved until Meg yanked him through another door and stopped, beaming.

“Here,” she said, gesturing below her. “I love it here.”

He turned to look at the land below them and found himself sinking down to sit on the hard-packed earth. She’d taken him to some sort of cliff near the top of the mountain, the ledge large enough for the two of them to lay comfortably side by side. It provided a view that allowed him to see for miles in every direction, letting him see more of Hell without Meg actually taking him there.

The land seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles ahead of him, most of it covered in shadow. There were more mountains that no doubt protected more valleys like the one he arrived in. They stretched in every direction, their bare, jagged tops reaching up into the hazy twilight. Beyond that he could see vast expanses of flat land that held small, square buildings made of ugly gray stone. Squinting, he saw a large lake in the distance, the surface giving off steam and the water boiling. When he turned the other way, he saw another lake, this one filled with fire that spouted jets of heat high into the air.

Human screams echoed from every direction, blending together into one solitary sound. He turned to Meg and watched her throw her head back and bask in the heat and pain around them and found himself moving closer to her. Small thorns grew in patches on their ledge, tearing at his palms, but he ignored the pain.

“How much of it is there?” he whispered.

Meg shrugged. “I don’t know. No one knows. You don’t even really know where you’ll be when a Hellmouth opens up. There was one back there before the asylum existed, you know. It used to open up in Australia. I haven’t even seen all of Hell, or even all of this level.”

“There are levels?”

“Yeah. There are stairs in the mountains, or holes in the ground, that lead downward, into different parts. Then there are more holes, more openings, more stairs. They say that if you go deep enough, you’ll find the Old Ones sleeping. But no one really knows.”

“How deep have you been?” he asked, turning his gaze back to the boiling lake in the distance.

“Not very deep,” she told him. “I was born here. In that room where there were souls hanging on the hooks. I spent my first few centuries here with Tom, exploring the mountains, learning to punish human souls, and learning how to make more demons. After a while, you wind up running, trying to find places to hide, or trying to get out. Demons will torture anything down here, even other demons, if they catch them. I was safe here, with father and mother and Tom. This was my home. But we would always leave, with so much to see. I think it may be endless. You could live forever and never see all of it. I still prefer your plane, though.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to his side. “I believe I do, too. But thank you. For showing me this.”

“What you saw in there, and what you saw at that party, that’s what I am, Castiel,” she said quietly. “Destruction. Pain. I eat human flesh and drink human blood. I torture your kind for fun. I buy their souls for material things and force them down here. You needed to know that.”

“Now I do. It doesn’t matter. It’s what you are.”

She let out a quiet sigh and pulled away. “We should get you back. We’ve already been down here too long.”

“It hasn’t felt like all that long,” he protested. “Sit. Just a few more minutes.”

She gave him a long look, but did as he asked, leaning against his shoulder. Castiel absently threaded his fingers through her hair, finger-combing the oily strands. His fingers circled the base of her horns for a moment and she shivered, a small noise slipping from her mouth.

Then he remembered: He could be _with_ her here, in this place.

He put more pressure on the base of her horns again, and this time she squirmed under his touch, moving her head to press it against his hands, like a cat demanding to be petted. He scratched her head and gently moved his knuckles down her back, flattening the short, sharp spines against her fur. She shivered, and actually let out what sounded like something between a purr and a moan. The claws of her hand sunk into his flesh, just enough to draw blood, and he watched as she raised his hand and her long tongue slithered from her mouth to lick at the wounds.

She was terrifying and magnificent. And in that moment, she was his.

He kissed her, pulling Meg on top of him and running his hands over every part of her true form that he could touch. The ribbon keeping them bound together restricted his one hand, while the other was free to roam as it liked. He parted her flat fur with his fingers to rub at her belly, discovering two rows of six small, rosy nipples dotting their way from her chest to her stomach. She pushed forward against his hands and captured his mouth again. Her kiss was more fur and tongue than anything else.

But she was warm under his hands, and so real. His head spun when he thought about it too long, the fact that he was kissing a demon, a creature from Hell, here in Hell itself. But there was excitement in it, too, treading where no human had ever tread before, and finally being with her real self.

“There are better places for this,” Meg murmured when she lowered her clawed hands to his belt.

“No,” he told her, “there really aren’t.”

Pulling off his belt, she kissed him again.

.

They lay together on the ledge without speaking for a long time, afterward. Meg hadn’t been able to get his shirt off completely, not with the ribbon around his wrist, but she had unbuttoned his heavy winter sweater and managed to discard his pants. But he was still warm without them, albeit a little scratched from her claws and the small thorns on the ground.

He kept his arm wrapped around her, face buried in her dark hair. He knew that they should move, that they should return to the portal. They’d spent hours there on the ledge, kissing and making love for what Castiel knew would be the only time. He could not have her in her vessel, not in good conscience.

It wasn’t quiet, but it was, strangely, peaceful. The screams in the air seemed normal now, as normal as the hum of machines in his own house, just more background noise. It was warm, too, cuddled up next to his demon with her fur against his skin.

She stirred next to him and reached for his pants. “We really have to go. We’ve been here for hours.”

“Alright,” he said slowly, slipping into his jeans. “Has it been that long?”

“Almost a whole day. No way to tell when we’ll come up.”

“Oh.”

She snorted and stood, pulling him up with her. He slipped his shoes back on slowly, wanting to linger for a few more minutes. Meg tugged at him impatiently and led them back to the bottom through a different route, hurrying through the sloped valley as if afraid someone would catch them.

“Dad’s near. I can feel him,” she explained. Castiel nodded, but darted his eyes around, trying to absorb every detail of his trip. Once they reached the Hellmouth, he jerked her to a halt.

“Meg, wait.”

“Clarence, whatever you want to say can wait until we’re topside,” she growled, tugging on his hand. He dug his heels into the dirt and forced her to stay still.

“I want this. Us.”

“You have this.”

“No, like this. I want to do it. I want to sell.”

She froze, her fur standing on end and her dark eyes wide in shock. “No.”

“No?”

“I’m not buying. Not you. I’m not bringing you here again.”

Confused and hurt, he took a step back from her, only stopping when the ribbon tightened. “I thought you wanted it. You asked me for it. Meg, I love you.”

Her fur flattened, and she dropped her gaze. “No. We need to leave.”

She dug her claws into his sweater and threw him onto the staircase before he could protest, dragging him upward. This time the trip seemed shorter, and he found himself in the small room under the asylum in what felt like mere seconds. When Meg released his hold on him, she was back in her vessel, small and nonthreatening. He checked his watch.

“Ten minutes. We were gone ten minutes. We could have stayed longer. Could have talked about…”

“I don’t want to hear about it again,” she said harshly. “You’re going home. Now.”

In a blink of an eye, he was standing in his bedroom while Meg pulled at the ribbon on her wrist. She took a step back from him when the knot came undone, eyes filled with anger.

“Can’t we talk about it?” he begged her. “You wanted my soul, when we first met. Why refuse now?”

“Because I love you too much to let you spend eternity in that place.”

“I could become like you. You said so. Said that I’d make a pretty toy, hanging on your wall, a collar on my neck…”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You’re high on the sex. You’re too young to do this.”

“I’ve seen you take people my age. I’ve seen their faces.”

“This is forever, Castiel. Do you understand that? Forever. If I take you soul, you’re one of us _forever._ I’m sure your priest, or your God, would have a few things to say about that.”

“I love you,” he repeated. She shook her head.

“You’ll love someone else.”

She left before he could reply, vanishing and taking all the warmth in the room with her. Shivering, Castiel stood in the darkness, her ribbon dangling from his wrist, and began to cry.

.

She didn’t come back.

Every night he expected her to appear in his room again, a teasing smile on her face, bringing almost unbearable warmth with her, but she never did. He went to school and church, went out with Dean and looked after Sam and his own siblings, and tried not to worry.

He even went to the asylum, hunting for the small room that housed her Hellmouth, but could not find it. There was no trace of her there, no smell of sulfur or sign that the door to the staircase had even existed. Panicking, he tried to research Hellmouths, finding only ads for TV shows and episode summaries of some program from the 90’s. He prayed that she was just hiding the entrance from him, that she had not fled back to Hell to be alone and that the Hellmouth had closed while she was there.

He kept the ribbon she’d bound them together with in Hell, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger at random times during the day, trying to comfort himself, trying to convince himself that she was simply angry and was off dealing with her own emotions over his offer.

.

It was almost a month before he heard anything.

Hael slipped into his room just before dawn, wearing what looked like a toga, her dark hair pulled back from her face by a headband. There were purplish circles under her eyes and dark marks on her neck, but she looked as happy as Castiel had ever seen her.

“I know you know,” she said. “I saw you, at the barn party. I just didn’t want to say anything. It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“It wasn’t mine, either,” he mumbled. Rubbing his eyes, he took in her outfit. “Where were you?”

“Some college party in Pennsylvania,” she answered smoothly. “Tom wanted to go out.”

“How long?” he asked.

“Two years,” Hael whispered. “I’ve been all over the world with him.”

“You didn’t seem scared, at that party. You saw those men on hooks and you didn’t flinch. I watched you drink blood.”

She blushed slightly then. “Only a little. And of course I wasn’t scared. I was with Tom. Besides, it was very tame.”

“You’ve been to more than one of those things?”

Hael nodded. “The first year I knew him, he took me to a massacre. He thought it was very sweet. In demon terms it is.”

“You weren’t scared?”

“Are you kidding? I was terrified! Frozen in complete shock. Then we talked, and he told me that this was what he was, and that if he wanted, he could take it all away from me. I wouldn’t remember it. But I didn’t want that. It was horrible, seeing all those people die. The blood, the screaming. The way the bodies smelled when they burned. But it was…I’m a bad person, Castiel.”

Standing, he walked over to his sister and pulled her into a hug. “You’re not.”

“I stayed with him. Even after that, I wanted him. He’s wonderful, Cas. We’ve been all over the world. He listens when I talk, or just sits with me while I do my homework. But he doesn’t shy away from what he is, either. They’re demons, Castiel. Different from us. Different morals, different way of living. If I had been a demon woman and he took me there, I would’ve found it sweet. Apparently it’s a big thing.”

“Has he asked for your soul?” Castiel asked quietly. Shaking her head against his chest, Hael pulled away from him.

“No,” she said. “Never. Not once. We didn’t even meet at the asylum. We met at the movies.”

“The movies?”

Hael nodded. “My friends and I snuck into an R-rated picture and he was there, and he was nice. I found out what he was a few weeks later, when I went exploring. He was on the grounds, and his eyes were black, but I wasn’t afraid.”

“He’s…older,” Castiel said lamely. Hael blinked.

“Well, so’s yours.”

Castiel laughed, and Hael laughed with him. “I suppose it’s true. But you will be careful, won’t you?”

Hael’s face grew serious. “Castiel, he’s a demon. I’m human. It isn’t going to work forever.”

“But what if you could have forever?” he said quietly. “What if you could, and they said no?”

“You didn’t,” she whispered, horrified. “I thought he was joking. _You didn’t.”_

“I did.”

“You can’t do that. You wouldn’t be the same, when they were done with you down there. Tom’s told me about it, how demons are made, and--”

“I’ve been there,” he interrupted. “She took me. I went down there with her and I saw what she really looked like and I told her I loved her and offered her my soul and she left.”

“She’ll come back,” Hael promised. “Tom’s left a few times, too, but he always comes back.”

Castiel sat down on his bed and buried his head in his hands. “How did this happen to us?”

Hael sat down beside him and shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess. Did she really take you to Hell?”

He nodded against his hands. “Yes. I saw what she really looked like. I saw people hanging off the walls, I heard humans screaming, and I knew they were being tortured, but I didn’t run. We were there for hours, and it was…Hael, it was nothing like I imagined. It was dark and it was terrifying, but it was amazing.”

“It was different,” she said quietly. “Being with them is. There’s no expectations. No future. There’s just the _now.”_

Yes, he thought. There was just the present when he was with Meg. There were no worries for the future, or for what was going on outside of their little bubble.

“If he asked you for your soul, would you give it to him?”

Hael stared down at her hands and frowned. “I haven’t thought about it, honestly.”

“If you offered, do you think he’d take it?”

“I don’t know. We’ve talked about it, the last few months. I met his mom. She seemed nice.”

“She was terrifying.”

“Well, yeah. But so’s our mother. But I don’t…I don’t want to go to Hell. Tom said it takes centuries to become a demon, even if you hurry the process along. And it changes you. Takes away everything you are, all of your human memories, until you’re a blank slate. It’s torture and screaming and blood and pain all the time down there. If I did…if I crossed over, I’d want to still be me.”

“But you’ve talked about it?” he pressed.

“There are…there’s another way,” she said. “It doesn’t take as long, and you don’t lose all of yourself.”

“How?”

“You drink their blood,” she whispered. “A lot of it. Over months and months. You’ll start to change, if you do that. You’ll become like them, slowly, until suddenly you are one, but still in your same body.”

“Would you do it, if he offered?”

Hael hesitated. “Castiel, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna leave mom and dad or our brothers and sisters. I still have to go to college. I don’t really even know myself yet. The things I’ve seen and done, they’re wonderful, but there are other things to do. Human things. I’d like to do those, too. But even if I did become a demon, it wouldn’t be forever. We’d eventually die.”

“Meg said it was nearly impossible for demons to die.”

“The Old Ones will rise eventually, Castiel. It may take thousands of years, but they’ll wake up and crawl back out of the earth and lay waste to everything here. They’ll cleanse the taint of humanity from all things. Including lesser demons. Then the angels will come back, and force them under again, and the cycle will begin anew. At least, that’s what Azazel told me.”

“You spoke to their father?”

Hael frowned. “Well, yeah. He was at the barn party, and he’s been to a few others. There was a ritual human sacrifice in South Africa a few months ago, and Tom brought me. Something about blessing the site of the first ever Hellmouth, and Azazel was leading it. It was a wild time. I’m surprised Meg didn’t bring you, too.”

Castiel’s mouth went dry as he looked at his little sister. Her tone was casual as she talked about the thing’s she’d seen, as if ritual human sacrifices and cannibalism parties were part of her every day routine, and realized that her demon had taken her deeper into his world than Meg had ever taken him into hers. Then he realized that, to Hael, they _were_ becoming normal, that her demon was slowly bringing her into his world.

“He wants to keep you,” Castiel blurted. “That’s why he’s doing all of this. To--to _normalize_ it for you. He’s going to ask you to drink his blood and become like him.”

“Well, I’d have to finish High School first,” Hael said firmly. But a smile stretched across her face, anyway. “And wait after that. I’m too young to think about forever.”

“Meg told me I’d find someone else to love. That she didn’t want me there with her, in Hell.”

“You offered your _soul_ to her, Castiel, and then you told her you loved her. Of course she ran. That’s a pretty big thing to put on someone else, even a demon. You basically told her you wanted to spend eternity with her. You basically _proposed.”_

“I did not!”

Hael rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yes, you did. ‘Oh, baby, take my soul so we can spend eternity together!’ What part of that doesn’t sound like marriage? Or at least as close as you can get with one of them?”

Castiel cringed. “Oh, God. No wonder she won’t talk to me.”

“Well, why don’t you just call her?” Hael asked. “Call her and ask to talk to her in a reasonable manner.”

“She doesn’t have a phone.”

Hael sighed again. “Really. You need to ask more questions. I’ll be right back.”

Hael scurried out of his room. When she returned she was wearing her nightgown, having shed her toga, and was carrying a small bowl with runes carved into the side in one hand. Her other hand held a large bottle filled with dark-red liquid.

“Is that?”

“Goat’s,” she said smoothly. “Human works best, but I didn’t feel comfortable keeping that jar.” Opening the jar, she poured some into the shallow bowl, cursing when a few drops spilled on the skirt of her nightgown. “Good thing I went with brown. They’ll blend in until I can do the wash.”

She dusted her hands together, screwed the lid back on the jar, and then dipped her finger into the bowl, stirring the blood and chanting in a language he couldn’t place. It began bubbling after a moment, and when she ended the chant, it kept moving on its own.

“Tom, please,” she told the bowl. A crackling sound came from it, and Castiel jumped back, alarmed, until a familiar voice flowed from the bowl.

“Hael? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

“It’s Saturday,” she said back into the bowl. “Is Meg with you? Castiel wants to talk to her?”

“Yeah, she’s here. Gimmie a sec.” Static crackled outward from the bowl again, causing the blood to jump. Castiel looked at his sister with wide eyes.

“What the Hell?”

“Phone call,” she said casually. “He spends a lot of time in Hell, and since time moves so differently down there, he wanted to find a way to keep in touch if he was gone too long.”

The bowl crackled again. “She’s working and can’t come to the phone. She says hi, and she’ll be back soon. She’s not mad at your big brother.”

Hael smiled. “Okay, good.”

“We still on for that thing on Thursday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it!”

Laughter rumbled from the bowl. “Awesome. I’ll see you then, babe.”

“Bye!” Hael said cheerfully. The blood in the bowl stopped bubbling, and Tom’s voice didn’t float through it again. “There you go, Cas. She’s just working. Probably getting her frustrations out on some helpless human soul, or doing some collecting.”

“For a whole month?”

“Probably longer, if she’s downstairs.” Hael rose to go, collecting her tools as she did. “It’ll be okay.”

“We’re in love with creatures straight from Hell and seriously contemplating becoming creatures straight from Hell like them, despite everything we’ve been taught since we were children. I’ve been to Hell. You’ve participated in human sacrifice. How is any of this okay?”

“It’s not like I killed anyone.”

“You watched. That’s just as bad. I saw those men in the barn and did nothing about them. We’re becoming monsters, just like them. I offered her my _soul.”_

Hael stared at him, her gaze becoming cold. “No wonder Azazel doesn’t like you.”

“Oh, he likes you?”

“Well, as much as he can like any human, I guess. Castiel, we’re not monsters. We might not be normal, but neither are our partners. Those things, they’re a part of them. They’re not people. They don’t think like us. It’s a different way of life. Yes, it’s sick and it’s horrible, but if you want to be with someone like them, you have to accept it. It comes with the package. There’s no changing what they are.”

“You love him.”

“I do,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t things about him or his world that scare me. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not terrified whenever he shows me something new about his people, or brings me to one of those places. But he doesn’t do it to scare me. He does it because he wants me to be part of his life, and because if he were courting a demon girl, that’s what he’d be doing. That’s all he knows.”

“Meg never…we never did that.”

“Well, maybe she doesn’t want you to be part of her life. Maybe she wants to be part of yours instead.”

“Are you going to do it?” he asked her. “Drink his blood and become like him?”

“Eventually,” she said quietly. “It’s too late to turn back now.”

She left, closing the door softly behind her, leaving Castiel alone.

Yes, he thought. It was too late to turn back now.

.

Meg came back to him that night. The room filled with warmth and he felt her crawl into bed beside him, snuggling up against his back.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” she asked. Shaking his head, Castiel took her hand and pulled it over his waist. She was warm, and her breath smelled of sulfur, and he could smell blood on her as well. But something in his body relaxed when he touched her, and he felt perfectly content there, in their bubble, with her by his side. But he still didn’t turn to look at her.

“Not now. Not about that. Where were you?”

“I was with my father. We talked about some things.”

“And?”

“He told me I was an idiot. Then Tom told me I was an idiot. Then my mother told me I was an idiot. Then your sister told me I was an idiot. Really, it wasn’t a very fun time. Apparently I’m very stupid.”

“Hael told me some things.”

“I know she did. I’m sorry, for not keeping you better informed.”

“It’s okay.”

“You’re so…you’re so _pure,”_ she said. “To make you one of us, to take that away…”

“It would be horrible?” he guessed.

“…It would be the most wonderful thing I could ever do, as a demon. To take a pure soul. Nothing would ever compare to it again.”

He stayed quiet and gripped her hand harder. “I would give it to you. Freely offered.”

“I know. Go to sleep now. I’ll be here in the morning.”

.

Meg was still sleeping the next morning when he woke and dressed for church. Instead of disturbing her, he kissed her on the forehead and left a note on his desk, saying he’d be back. It felt oddly domestic, smoothing her hair back from her face and leaving her tucked in his bed.

Hael glanced at him through the service, a concerned look on her face. He tried to focus, but there was something in him that made him feel sick there, and he saw that it was in Hael, too. She squirmed all through the service and wrung her hands together, as if something was crawling under her skin, and walked quickly from the church, only stilling once they’d stepped outside.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” she asked him as they strolled away. “We don’t belong there anymore.”

“I don’t understand how this happened to us.”

“We fell in love with the wrong people. That’s all.”

He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. Hael squeezed back. “Did she come back last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you talk about it?”

“No.”

“Are you? Going to do it, I mean?”

“Is it worth it, do you think? Giving everything up?”

“You have to think in different terms. What you’re gaining, instead of losing,” Hael said, swinging their hands between them like they were children. “You’ll live for ages and ages. You’ll see everything change. You’ll get to travel the world and do things you couldn’t do if you were human, with human limits. You’ll watch cities die and cities rise.”

“We’ll watch our families die.”

“That, too. But we’ll move on. Everybody dies, right?”

“You are far too calm about this. We’re talking about losing our souls.”

“Not losing,” Hael argued. “Souls don’t just poof into nothing. They’re eternal. Demons are just corrupted human souls. That’s all any of us are, in the end. Our souls. The bodies don’t matter.”

“When you did you get so smart?”

“I’ve been told I’m very advanced for my age.”

“Do you think we’ll look like them?”

“I don’t know. But having a tail would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?”

They spent the rest of the walk in silence, Hael only releasing her hand when she saw Tom standing at her front gate. Castiel watched as she ran up to him and threw her arms around him, squealing happily.

She was young and stupidly in love, and he envied her assurance that everything would work out fine in the end. He watched her give a little wave before her demon teleported them away and lingered outside of his home, heart pounding.

But his choice was made. As Hael had said, they were in too deep already. There was no turning back, after the things they’d seen.

Meg was sitting up in bed when he walked into his room, a magazine opened in her lap. She patted the bed without looking at him. He climbed in with her.

“I like how things are now,” she said quietly. “I like having someone who isn’t a demon.”

“Alright.”

“What do you want, Castiel?” she asked him, echoing her question from so long ago.

“You. This. Us together. Always.”

She nodded, and then put the magazine down. “Why don’t I tell you what I want?”

He nodded slowly, and Meg took a deep breath.

“I want you to live a normal human life for as long as you possibly can. I want you to experience human things. I want you to know what you’re giving up.”

“I already do.”

“You’re so young,” she sighed. “I was, too. I talked to my father, Castiel. Did you know that I was fourteen when I died? A fever. A stupid fever. Something that you can cure with antibiotics now took me out and took me to Hell. I was too young to know what I was selling. What I was giving up.”

“I know what I want, Meg. And Hael tells me that there are other ways.”

She closed her eyes. “Forever is a long time.”

“Yes.”

“You’d never see them again, once you changed. You couldn’t. We’d have to leave. Stay in Hell until they died, or go somewhere else. We couldn’t stay on the Hellmouth here.”

“I know.”

“You have to be sure. Once you start, there’s no going back.”

“I’m sure. I want this, Meg. Us.”

She gave him a steady look. “There are things that you won’t like about it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you to regret it.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“How about I make you a deal?” she asked. “A good deal.”

“Which is?”

“Live your human life,” she said softly. “For ten years, live your human life. At the end of those ten years, if you want it, I’ll give it to you.”

“Ten years,” he agreed.

Meg leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Deal sealed. You’re going to make a horrible demon, Clarence. You’re too moral.”

“Will I still see you? Or does a human life mean you leave again?”

“No, I’ll stay. As long as my Hellmouth is open, I’ll stay. But you need to know, what’s out there, what we do. You need to walk in my world.”

“I walked into Hell for you,” he told her. “Everything else should be easy.”

She laughed, high and feminine and happy, and Castiel smiled as she did.

“Hael told me that I have to drink your blood for it to happen. How long does it take?”

“Not long. A year, maybe less, of drinking every day. But it isn’t done often. Sharing our blood is…it’s very intimate. Binding. Permanent. It doesn’t matter how you get to Hell, or who you sell your soul to. Once you’re down there, and you’ve changed and gotten away from them, it really doesn’t matter. But sharing blood is a deeper connection. It’s like…”

“Marriage?” he suggested.

“In a way. One where there’s no hope of divorce. Not ever. When demons exchange blood, it creates a bond that lasts until one of them dies.”

“I was raised Catholic. We don’t believe in divorce, anyway.”

She laughed again. “That’s one way to look at it.”

She settled down in the bed and picked up her magazine again. Sitting up only to take off his coat and tie, Castiel grabbed a book off his nightstand and settled down beside her, intent on sharing a quiet Sunday.


End file.
